Lithuania in the News
20th April 2008
Winning Design Announced for the Guggenheim - Hermitage Museum in Vilnius
The winning design by Zaha Hadid. Photo courtesy Lietuvos Rytas.
The world’s leading architects have been vying for the privilege of designing the proposed Guggenheim - Hermitage Museum in Vilnius. The winning design, announced on April 8, 2008 by an international panel of leading architects and museum directors, was the impressive design by the famous Iraqi-born London-based architect Zaha Hadid. In 2004 she became the
The architect Zaha Hadid.
Photo by Steve Double,
courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects.
first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, which is often cited as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in architecture. Other leading architects in the design competition were the American Daniel Libeskind, who designed the master plan for the reconstructed ground zero of the World Trade Centre in New York, and the Italian Massimiliano Fuksas. Both Libeskind and Fuksas are of Lithuanian heritage.
Situated on the right bank of the Neris River, in the modern heart of Vilnius, the Guggenheim - Hermitage Museum Vilnius branch is bound to become an internationally acclaimed artistic centre and draw card for visitors to Vilnius. In addition to displaying artworks from the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Hermitage Museum in St.Petersburg, it will also house the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Centre, a Litvak Cultural Centre, a youth educational centre and two non-commercial cinema halls.

Further information: www.lrytas.lt 09/04/08 , www.pritzkerprize.com/2004/